Product design describes the process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve users' problems or address specific needs in a given market. The key to successful product design is an understanding of the end-user customer, the person for whom the product is being created. Good designers have always applied design thinking to product design because it’s focused on end-to-end product development, and not just the “design phase” part. 

Product design is the process of defining a product that delivers value to customers. It is the transformation of ideas into products and services that people pay for, that are used by customers and are valuable enough to be recommended to others. The design process can be divided into four phases: problem definition, idea generation, concept development, and implementation.

A simple definition of product design is "the creation of a new product; the application of design in order to meet consumer needs or wants".

Product design is the art and science of designing a product to fulfill customer requirements. This is done within a set of constraints such as cost, performance, reliability, marketability, and competition. The design process can be broken down into steps:

The product design process involves customer and market research. The result of this research is a problem definition. The problem definition is a description of a customer's need or want. The problem definition is intended to describe the need in a way that will drive the design of a product to fulfill that need.

The need or want that is described in a problem definition must be a real problem for the customer that has not been solved by an existing product. If the need or want is fulfilled by an existing product, the customer does not have a need to pay for a new product. The customer does not need a better toaster if the existing toaster works fine. The customer needs a way to make toast without burning it. The problem definition is about describing the customer need and not about the product idea that will fulfill the need. The product idea is in the next step.

The process of designing a product starts with asking the question, "What do the customers need or want?". 

A designer can then use the customer needs to create a product concept, or a description of a product that will fill that need. The product concept is a description of the product that will be made. The product concept is a description of the product that is going to be made. The product concept is the description of the product before the design of the product has started. The product concept is not the final design of the product but it gives a good idea of what the end result will be. The designer does not have to think about materials, production methods or cost at this point because these are constraints on how the final product can be designed and produced.

The process of designing anything is about taking an idea and turning it into something real. One of the questions that designers always ask themselves is "What if?". What if we make the handle longer? What if we change this color? The next step in the product design process is to answer all of these what-ifs by creating a full description of the product. The description should include a detailed list of materials, a list of parts and components, drawings or sketches showing how each part works with other parts and how the entire product works. This is called creating an exploded view drawing. 

The next step is creating a description of the new product using words and pictures called the Product Design Specification (PDS). The PDS is a list of all the details required to turn that idea into reality. This includes drawings or photographs, descriptions and specifications for each component, a complete materials list and any additional notes about the product design.

In its simplest form, product design is composed of two phases: problem definition and idea generation. The next step is to generate several ideas and then choose the one that will fulfill the need or want that was identified in the problem definition.

A good place to start asking questions about what customers might want in their lives is to look at how they spend their time and money. What products do they buy? How much time do they spend on different activities? Are there any trends that can be identified? For example, if health clubs are becoming more popular then maybe exercise equipment like treadmills would be something else that people would use. Looking at past sales data for existing products can also reveal potential new product ideas based on things such as price or color preferences of consumers within a specific demographic segment or geographic region. Researching competitors' offerings may also provide valuable information regarding unmet consumer needs and potentially lucrative market opportunities beyond current offerings.

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